Theresa May and Al-Qaeda's ''Assurances''

Thu 29th Mar 2012

Some have suggested that in Britain an Al-Qaeda hate preacher has more rights to protection than either a civilian or victim of Al-Qaeda, based on Theresa May’s example of seeking assurances from the Kingdom of Jordan, that if deported, Osama Bin Laden’s right hand man Abu Qatada will not face another trial with evidence, allegedly, obtained through torture.

The British Home Secretary is out of touch with reality. The fact that she is going to visit King Abdullah 2nd of Jordan, with the hope of obtaining ‘assurances’ for Abu Qatada, is a direct insult to the people of Jordan, who in 2005 suffered a bomb attack by Al-Qaeda, which killed over 56 people and injured nearly one hundred.

Equally, the Government haven’t taken into consideration the fact that in 2005, London was also attacked by Al-Qaeda, in a series of incidents on a bus and the underground tube stations, which killed and injured over 700 people. Just days after the London bomb blasts, another incident occurred in Baghdad, when on the 13th July, a US soldier was brutally murdered, along with a group of children, because an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber objected to a US marine handing out sweets to children.

Within the chaos that followed, parents carried out a frantic search but tragically, the majority were unable to find or even identify the scorched and decapitated remains of their children, the majority of whom were under 12 years of age. One father was only able to recognise his son from his head, while the hands of two younger victims still held onto the coloured sweet wrappings.

A report was commissioned in 2004, which looked into the dynamics of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. It illustrated that as a movement, it had little or no support among the Iraqi people, as proven by the non-Iraqi elements which made up the leadership and ranks of the organisation.

Concerns about the presence of fundamentalists had been raised with the previous British Government, as illustrated last year by the former Director General of the British Intelligence agency MI5. Speaking at the Reith Lecture’s, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller informed a stunned audience, that the invasion of Iraq lead to many British fighters going over to wage their ‘Jihad’ against both the US/UK armies and the Iraqi people, as history has now proven.

More recently, concern has been raised again, because of the numbers of British fundamentalists, who are now going over to Somalia, as ‘volunteers’ for the Al-Qaeda inspired group Al-Shabaab.

The presence of Al-Qaeda has increased dramatically since the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia have also signalled, that terrorists returning home ‘will be worse’ than previously expected, with many having engaged in combat against Soviet Forces during the 1980’s, or having been trained in Afghan camps throughout the 1990’s. Theresa May’s ‘assurances’ do not consider that ‘a new generation’ of fundamentalists are and will be returning home, armed with ‘even deadlier combat skills’.

Hussein Al-Alak is a British based journalist and is chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK. Hussein is also a member of the Royal British Legion and a mental health advocate for Combat Stress. You can follow him on Twitter at TotallyHussein